Therapeutic Hypothermia

The experimental use of hypothermia in people with nervous system trauma came about after years of laboratory research conducted by W. Dalton Dietrich, Ph.D., and his colleagues. Their work, beginning in the 1980s, showed that cooling the body temperature a couple of degrees resulted in improved recovery of walking in paralyzed rats. Currently, they continue their work to gain a better understanding of the biochemical, histological and physiological effects of hypothermia.

It took some years to begin testing this therapy in people partly because reliable methods to cool patients still needed to be developed. By the year 2000, several companies had developed devices to control a patient’s temperature. An initial goal of using cooling devices was to counteract fever in patients with stroke, heart attacks, head trauma and spinal cord injury. Fever is common in these patients and studies by various investigators, including Helen Bramlett, Ph.D., at The Miami Project, report that small increases in body temperature can worsen neurological outcome.

Today’s very sophisticated cooling devices now allow clinicians to accurately record and manipulate a patient’s body temperature. With this degree of control, it appears possible to safely cool injured patients and, with further study, potentially give them a chance for better neurological recovery.

CLINICAL TRIALS INITIATIVE UPDATE

Clinical Trials Pipeline - Where are we and where are we going? And the ever-burning question...when will we get there?

As everyone knows, repairing the damaged spinal cord is no simple task. There are multiple types of nerve cells and glial cells that are damaged or lost, there are ascending and descending nerve fibers that are interrupted, there are local spinal circuits that are lost or begin functioning abnormally, there is demyelination and remyelination, there are inhibitory molecules, and there is scar tissue. And that’s not including the changes that occur in the muscles as a result of paralysis. During the 25 year existence of the Miami Project, however, significant progress has been made in understanding how to begin to repair the injured spinal cord. Four key components to developing cures for SCI involve neuroprotection, cell replacement, regeneration, and rehabilitation. Miami Project scientists are currently translating 3 of these 4 components as part of the Clinical Trials Initiative (neuroprotection, cell replacement, and rehabilitation) and are diligently moving forward with the fourth component (regeneration). Each of the 3 components being translated is described in the links below along with updated progress.